Foundlings
A calm companion inside Claude Desktop that grounds you in the day you have actually had.
A moment to pause
I built Foundlings as a proof of concept. People are increasingly spending their working day inside Claude or another AI platform, and sometimes we need to take a step back. I wanted to explore whether a playful character could offer a small moment of peace and reflection inside the place where the work was happening.
That connects with my wider interest in wellbeing, my therapist training and projects like Find Solace. With Foundlings, I wanted to bring some fun and character into that space: something you could call on when you needed a break.
Calling on your Foundling
The result is a Claude Desktop plugin with a custom animated character. You can ask it to "ground me", and Claude looks back over the conversation to offer a few gentle reflections on what you've been working through. Your Foundling appears inside the chat, with the words fading in beneath it. There are no stats, streaks or feeding routines to keep up with.
Animating inside a plugin
Designing the characters and working out how to animate them was a big part of the project. I wanted to see how personal and playful I could make the experience, while working within the restrictions of a plugin running inside another application.
The Claude plugin ecosystem was still developing, and I ran into issues and restrictions that weren't documented. Finding out what was possible became part of the build itself, alongside getting the animation and the reflective experience working together.
Seeing how far I could take it
For me, Foundlings was a way to explore how far I could take a plugin: a small animated companion that offered a moment to pause in the middle of the working day.
Built with: a hand-rolled MCP server, an MCP App panel, GSAP on an addressable SVG rig, Claude, Claude Code
Part of the Rolling Waves work archive.